A Thousand Miles
by Mugglewriter14
Summary: One-Shot, what happened to Chillingworth while he was trying to get to Hester, what where his thoughts and hopes and how one moment can crush every beautiful thing in your life forever.


I remember that day as if it was yesterday. Hester was beautiful and all I could think about was how this was the beginning of my greatest wishes coming true. Throughout my life dedication to knowledge and wisdom, I had always wanted a family. However, because of my deformities given to me when I was born I believed that my dreams would never come true. Now it was coming true and I could not have been happier. Although she warmed my heart and kept me happy, I knew that she did not love me and would not pretend to do so. Still, I believed that if I cared for her, supported her, and loved her to the best of my abilities then maybe she would learn to love me back instead of wanting a younger man whose handsomeness matched her youthful beauty. However, over time it became clear to me that she never would love me the way I did her.

A few months after our marriage I watched her as she stood on a ship sailing away towards our new life in the colonies, I would be staying behind in England to finish up some business then sail to Virginia to talk to a man about taking over my business then continue up to meet her in our new settlement. She was leaving without me so she could set up a household and get settled before I came and met her there. About a week before I was scheduled to leave for Virginia I received a letter from Hester. She told me that she had been welcomed with opened arms and that she had found a house. She told me of the people that she had met and became friends with and how they were all lovely people; she also talked of the young minister whom had the power to deliver moving and compelling sermons. She seemed to be getting on well, so I wrote back telling her that I would be joining her soon and that I was excited to see her.

Although when I got on my ship I could never have predicted the storm that we would meet. We where only a few hours away from the settlement we where stopping at when it started raining. The rain started coming down harder and harder until we could barely see past our noses. I decided to help the crew with tying off the sails so that they would not be damaged in the storm, but since I could not see instead of helping I fell overboard and held on to a large piece of driftwood. After falling overboard, everything was all a blur I woke up the next morning and I was on a beach. I was only there for a few hours before I was found by the Indian tribe close by but to me it felt like days. I felt cold even though it was early June. Then I woke up in an Indian hut with an old woman in the corner leaning over a bowl of water wringing out a cloth. I stayed with that tribe for close to three years. The first year they healed me, since I had gotten sick when I washed up on the shore, then I started to assimilate into their society. It took a long time for them to full trust me and allow me to live there as a part of their tribe. I still did not let me leave, but I made many friends and living there was not only pleasant and enjoyable but also informational and fascinating. More than anything I wanted to get back to my life and have that family I had so wanted to have. As I lived there I learned that I excelled at learning the different kinds of herbal treatments for different diseases. It was then that I realized I wanted to be a doctor and help people.

As my time there in the tribe ended I finally convinced the chief to let me leave and join my wife at last. He had a few of the young warriors go with me to the settlement. As I got closer and closer to seeing Hester, I grew nervous that she had moved on believing that I was dead. I crushed those feelings as fast as they had entered my head. As I entered the town limits I realized that everyone was at the center of the town surrounding the scaffold. There was a young woman standing there with a baby held to her bosom. I could hear the baby crying as its mother held on to it as hard as she could. As I got closer, I realized that I recognized the woman standing on the platform. It was Hester. My heart dropped. I felt all the flames of my dreams and hopes put out by the site of her standing there on the scaffold. At first I was angry with her, how could she betray me like that. However, then I realized that this was unavoidable. She had never loved me and it was obvious that she must have loved the man she had sinned with because by the looks of it she was refusing to tell who it was.

My thoughts where all clouded and my actions robotic. I do not even remember what I was really doing because I then was talking to a person in town and I ended the conversation with a very vengeful statement, I did not know I had that kind of anger within me. Nevertheless, the father of the child in my wife's arms had wronged me in every way. Hester and I where even, because I had done her wrong by marrying her and forming an unnatural union of her beauty and my oldness and deformity. All I knew now was that I would stop at no cost to reveal the co-sinner. That was all that mattered now. I knew that I could no longer keep my name it would give my new quest away to everyone and make life for Hester just that much worse. Now I had a new name, I was now Roger Chillingworth.


End file.
